Entangled Alliances
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”
– George Washington
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. Entangling alliances with none.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Flowers bloom, pollen builds, and temperatures rise. Bees bounce from bush to blossom, as branches burst with birds and buds.
On the Vernal equinox, the earth enjoys a fleeting balance. Dark and light, bull and bear, red and white… all continue the eternal quest for an elusive crown.
But some stories are inordinately skewed, certain coins show only one side. In this brief moment of precarious equilibrium, let’s even the scale with some forbidden thoughts.
Origin Story
The Second World War is the origin story of the international “rules-based order”.
A global conflagration that took 70 million lives, unleashed nuclear weapons, laid waste to much of the world, and caused eight decades of proxy conflicts is known as “the good war”.
Its supposed “moral” is that liberal alliances are needed, and must deploy force to thwart acts (or potential acts) of rogue aggression or racial prejudice.
This has been called the “load-bearing myth” of World War II. It’s the basis for every subsequent military intervention, and for obligating Americans to defend Israel no matter what.
For these reasons, the greatest catastrophe in human history can never be questioned. Nor can we remind each other that it started a couple decades earlier, by intervention rather than reticence.
We must assume it’s always Munich 1938… but never Sarajevo 1914. The former lesson is almost always misunderstood. The latter is frequently forgotten, and repeatedly re-learned.
That seems to be happening again.
Those who think it unwise to continue the Ukraine war are maligned as sniveling cowards and a craven appeasers… just as anyone who questions US support for Israel’s government is reflexively smeared as an implicit “anti-semite” (if not an overt one). It’s easier to dismiss skeptics by impugning their motives than to engage them by addressing their arguments.
Those who want to end the killing in Ukraine are derided as “Neville Chamberlains”. This is a tired tactic, but a predictable one.
Whether Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, or Vladimir Putin… anyone who dares defy US hegemony becomes a new “Hitler”, to be aggressively resisted by wannabe Churchills.
But invoking “Chamberlain” is an odd insult, particularly from people who insist “we” must fight to defend the Ukraine.
Neville Chamberlain wasn’t the peacenik they presume. He was the Prime Minister who gave the disastrous security guarantee to Poland. The “Chamberlains” in the current conflict are those who would do the same for the Ukraine.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of them. Many condemned President Trump for daring to talk to Putin, much less deal with him. But that’s diplomacy. It’s what leaders are supposed to do.
Eisenhower hosted Khrushchev, Roosevelt held summits with Stalin, Reagan dealt with Gorbachev, and Nixon met with Mao. All were wise to do so. Yet when Trump spoke to Putin, his domestic enemies and global “allies” pitched a fit.
Which raises a broader question.
Loaded Word
How are western Europeans, the Ukraine, and Israel (which was peopled mostly by eastern Europeans) “allies” of the United States? What do they do for us?
They buy weapons, receive “aid”, and funnel cash to compliant politicians and connected corporations. This has been going on since the Marshall Plan. But political payoffs and corporate welfare do nothing for most taxpayers who foot the bill.
Three years ago, few Americans had heard of the Ukraine. Had it vanished, they’d never have known.
Why should they? Unless they’re from there or (like me) have a wife who is, why would they care?
Would they die to defend Donetsk? Does who rules Luhansk affect their lives?
Of course not. The location of a boundary between Russia and the Ukraine (or whether even there is one) makes no difference to them. Nor should it.
Yet Americans in forlorn towns and crime-ridden cities are somehow obliged to preserve (or expand) arbitrary borders between distant peoples. Not just on the Ukrainian steppes, but in western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.
On the other side of the Black Sea (which is 6,000 miles from the United States), our “Greatest Ally” keeps enticing us into trouble. Last week, President Trump attacked Yemen. This act not only contradicted what he said about prior administrations a few months ago. It was also unconstitutional (as if that matters).
Even worse, it was a war crime that killed innocent civilians… ostensibly in response to Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping.
But the Houthis hadn’t attacked American vessels. They’d harassed Israeli ones, and put a major port out of business.
They did so in reaction to the US-funded Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. The Houthis set their sights on US ships only after Trump ordered strikes on Yemen.
Instead of getting the hell out of this tumultuous region, the president upped the ante and made matters worse. He said he’d hold Iran accountable for any future Houthi attacks, risking a wider war on behalf of our “ally”… against a country posing no threat to the United States.
Acting as if Boston or Baltimore had been bombed, Trump’s press secretary announced that
“all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose.”
Of course, no one had “terrorized” America. And most who’d do so would be incited by the US government enabling what Israel does.
Whether or not you support Israel, this is obvious. Everyone knows it. But it’s not supposed to be said. Nor are the consequences allowed to be acknowledged.
As with attacks on innocent people anywhere, those on Israelis are indefensible. Yet they (should) have nothing to do with the United States.
But because the US government sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong, American citizens are needlessly endangered by the inevitable blowback.
In a world of self-imposed tripwires, the one in Israel is the most prominent example of how a misguided alliance turns another country’s priorities into America’s problems. In the Middle East and Europe, the US government is a spider spinning webs to ensnare itself.
I can see why our “allies” would welcome this arrangement. I would too if I were them. But we’re not them.
Any country we call an “ally” is usually an albatross. They cost money we don’t have to cause problems we don’t need.
Let’s be honest. If we stopped being “allies” with Israel, Ukraine, or western Europe (or anyone, for that matter), which side would be worse off?
Even the word “ally” is loaded. Allied for what? Against whom? The appellation presumes an enemy. It’s another weird relic of the Second World War, invoked whenever our meddlers implore us to make another mess.
The “Axis” epithet is wielded the same way. Mussolini’s descriptor is hurled to evoke fear of scary countries we’re supposed to loathe. George W Bush famously revived it when he lumped Iran, Iraq, and North Korea into an imbecilic “Axis of Evil” to justify war on Iraq after a bunch of Saudis attacked the U.S.
Foreign Affairs (naturally) used it to describe collaboration among Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. How odd that these nations might work together to guard against governments that express eagerness to destroy each of them.
As always, language is instructive. Why aren’t China, Russia, and Iran referred to as “allies” of each other? Why aren’t the Europeans and Israelis part of an American “axis”?
Perhaps for the same reason the Russian incursion into Ukraine is an “unprovoked attack”, but US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Grenada, Panama, and Vietnam were “self-defense”.
The True Isolationists
This isn’t to imply Americans should isolate themselves. International interaction and exchange should be free and open, with force reserved only for self-defense from imminent threats. By not butting into everyone else’s affairs, the US would face few of those.
The true “isolationists” are proponents of wars and sanctions that limit trade and inhibit travel. They cower behind economic embargoes, divisive alliances, and kinetic conflict. Non-interventionists shun such seclusion, advocating peace, commerce, and honest friendship with every country.
John Quincy Adams, who drafted the Monroe Doctrine (which stipulated not only that Europeans stay out of America’s hemisphere but that the US not meddle in theirs), famously asserted that
“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
In the northern hemisphere, the heat rises and shadows shorten. We embrace the light and spurn the dark. It’s time to tend our own garden, and stop picking weeds from other farmers’ fields.